For many people, fashion is a big part of their lives. Sometimes it's a love for the aesthetics of clothing that attracts them, other times it's a desire for a status symbol to advertise one's wealth and influence to others. Or maybe they just hold some piece of clothing in a higher sentimental light than expected. Whatever the reason for their obsession is, those who love fashion are bound to spend a great deal of time working on their wardrobe. Thus, it's not surprising that people often get frustrated and upset when their clothes get stained, wet, or otherwise damaged while they're in public. All that work just to get humiliated!

When this situation plays out in fiction, however, characters tend to react as if they'd been violently wounded, going way past mere frustration and embarrassment. They'll scream, cry, throw fits, sometimes even mourn the "death" of the garment. In more lighthearted uses of this trope, this reaction will be entirely Played for Laughs, the writers will expect the audience to find the idea of freaking out over clothes silly. Other times, the audience will be expected to agree with the character that getting one's clothes messy in front of people is horrible and the ultimate form of humiliation. In the latter case, this trope will either be Played for Drama or played for Cringe Comedy. Essentially, this trope is when Minor Injury Overreaction is applied to clothes. If the universe itself uses this trope, it might get treated as a "What the Hell, Hero?" moment. Understandable if the clothing is actually quite expensive.

Because such characters are defined by their love of fashion, The Fashionista is a likely victim of this trope. Non-Fashionista characters can react this way as well, however. After all, just because a character isn't defined by their love of fashion doesn't mean they don't care about it at all. Female characters tend to get wardrobe wounds a lot and female-targeted works frequently use this trope. After all, Vanity Is Feminine. The Fashionista or not, teenage girls tend to provide examples of this trope since ruined clothes make them easy targets for the Alpha Bitch and this trope would probably be the worst nightmare of the Alpha Bitch herself.

There are two forms of this trope:

Intentional

In this version the character's outfit is ruined intentionally by another character as a form of non-violent "attack". This variant is usually done either by the Alpha Bitch to her victims, or by the victims as a form of retaliation against the alpha bitch. Intentional Wardrobe Wounds often, though not always, double as examples of Contrived Clumsiness.

Accidental

In this version the character's outfit is ruined accidentally: the poor character is just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It may come up as a result of Giving Them the Strip, if the surviving escapee complains about the garment's loss.

Either way, they will be devastated. A common way for the character to visually convey their "trauma" is to spread their arms out slightly to the side, open their mouth in shock, and slowly tilt their head downward as they "survey the damage". Also see My Favorite Shirt, a super-trope, and Hat Damage, a specific sub-trope. Compare Nobody Touches the Hair, when it's the hairdo damage that gets this reaction.

Examples:

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Advertising

In the first ad (which portrays a staged, fictional event as opposed to using footage from the show proper) for My Super Sweet Sixteen featured in this video, a girl (played by a pre-fame Jennifer Lawrence!) is standing on stage in front of a cake at her sweet 16 birthday party. A disco ball falls and splatters cake onto her dress, embarrassing her in front of her friends. She's clearly mortified and definitely acts as if wounded!

Anime & Manga

A less serious example happens in K-On!'s college arc when Ayame is using Mio as a dress-up doll. She finds out while getting Mio to on try her t-shirt, being a far curvier girl, that Mio stretched it out completely (particularly around the chest-area). Mio apologizes about this immediately. Overlaps with A-Cup Angst

In Hana Yori Dango, Tsukushi's fellow students at the prestigious high school she attends use Produce Pelting to humiliate her in retaliation for the time she stood up to one of the beloved popular boys.

In Ranma ½, during Ranma and Ryōga's first battle in the series, Ryōga manages to tear a big hole in Ranma's shirt. Ranma complains about his favorite shirt getting wrecked, which causes Ryōga to comment that his whining makes him sound like a girl. Given Ranma's status, he doesn't take the comment well.

In PS238,Julie freaks out when someone tears her almost-indestructible cape during a fight. Justified because apparently her parents had to save up a lot of money to buy it and it can't be replaced. At the end of the arc, the casino owner lets her have a new, more indestructible (and capeless) outfit to go with her new code name.

Films — Live-Action

In 3 Idiots, Rancho inflicts this on Pia's fiance, Suhas, to show her how vain he is. Later uses it a second time by pretending Pia lost the watch he bought her.

Geek Charming combines this trope with Crash-Into Hello. Josh, the male lead, gets temporarily blinded by female lead Dylan's perfume spray as he walks through the school cafeteria, causing him to bump into her and get the food on the tray he was carrying all over her.

Mia in The Princess Diaries strikes back at Alpha Bitch Lana by getting chocolate ice cream all over Lana's cheerleader uniform during school lunch. This leads to all bystanders mocking Lana by chanting, "Lana got coned!"

In Sleepover the Alpha Bitch loses a bet and has to sit at a table that's right next to a dumpster at lunch. The film ends with her running away screaming after some garbage that was being thrown in the dumpster spills onto her lap, ruining her clothes.

In the movie Thoroughly Modern Millie, a well-meaning Millie tries an unconventional remedy for a spot on the white dress of a Rich Bitch at Muzzy's party. The guest's anguished howls of "SOY SAUCE!" can be heard throughout the whole mansion.

In a Deleted Scene from Mean Girls, Cady, the protagonist, has a friend rig the cafeteria table that Regina, the Alpha Bitch sits at so that when Regina puts down her tray, the table tilts towards her, causing the food to fall into her lap. At least, that's what Cady intends. Instead, Regina is distracted by her boyfriend and a member of her Girl Posse sits where Regina was supposed to, thus becoming the prank's victim.

First, there's a Food Fight scene in which the title characters treat the mess made of their clothes and hair as Serious Business and the ultimate insult.

Second, as part of the Alpha Bitch's Humiliation Conga, she gets covered in cake then knocked into a fountain, publicly humiliating her at her birthday party.

In Pay Back, gangster Fairfax complains and acts visibly annoyed when Porter shoots through one of his expensive alligator hide suitcases cotaining his precious suits which, as he he claims, cost more than the 70,000 dollars Porter is after.

In Zoom: Academy for Superheroes, a psychic highschool girl gets called a freak by Alpha Bitch cheerleaders, so she uses her powers to make a cafeteria food explosion that gets her bullies covered in the stuff.

In Carefree, Judge Travers is quite upset when Hypno Fool Amanda shoots the crown out of his best hat—"a real Tyrollean!"

Literature

The ice cream incident between Mia and Lana also happens in the novel version of The Princess Diaries (first in the series), although the circumstances are slightly different.

In Carpe Jugulum, Vlad (a vampire) screams in agony when doused by holy water, then winks and complains that his attacker just ruined a lovely silk waistcoat.

Both Reg shoe (a zombie) and Detritus (a troll) complain about holes put in their armor by weapons that would have killed somebody who wasn't either already dead, or basically made of stone. Detritus is annoyed he is going to have to pay for a new breastplate out of his own money.

In The Truth, vampire Otto Chriek is run through with a sword. His primary concern is that his fancy opera shirt is ruined yet again.

In Lonely Werewolf Girl this is the sum totality of the plan of one of the book's Big Bad's, to destroy Fire Queen Malveria's reputation by destroying her wardrobe. Since The Fashionista is her race's Hat and Serious Business this would be the Fire Demon equivalent of a nuclear strike. Malveria does suffer through a variety of of non-intentional wardrobe wounds in the series too.

In The Savannah Reid Mysteries, when Savannah gets shot, even though she rationalizes that she's dying, the thing she's most upset about is that the guy ruined her nightgown, which once belonged to her grandmother and has sentimental value to her.

Live-Action TV

Glory on Buffy the Vampire Slayer often seems more upset about her outfit being ruined than say, the fact that a teleporting spell was being put on her.

Glory: Look what you did to my dress!

On How I Met Your Mother, Barney gets a stain on his tie and suddenly acts as if the tie was alive and had been mortally wounded, even going so far as to attempt CPR on it.

In Glee unpopular students regularly have slushies thrown on them as a form of bullying.

The Cat in Red Dwarf, a humanoid creature evolved from the common housecat, whose genes have elevated feline vanity and compulsive self-grooming into something Up to Eleven. His reaction to damage to his clothing is sometimes a Berserk Button.

Happens in the episode "Vandalism". In the midst of all the considerable damage to the squadroom (upturned trash cans, spraypaint, files thrown across the floor), The Dandy Harris is most outraged that the vandal cut up his alpaca sweater.

Harris: There was no need for this!

In another episode, Harris chases a suspect into the sewer and trips, falling into the waste.

Harris: This will never come out! Yemana: It's not supposed to!

As often as it happened to him, you'd think he'd figure out not to dress to the nines while on the job.

In an episode of Edgemont, one of the girls thinks Laurel has spread rumors about her, so she confronts Laurel at the local hangout and dumps a basket of greasy fries on her, ruining Laurel's dress.

Lizzie Mcguire provides a few examples of this trope's use as a way to get back at the Alpha Bitch. Despite normally being an Annoying Younger Sibling, Lizzie's brother Matt sometimes defends his sister by playing wardrobe-ruining pranks on her tormentor, Kate.

One of these pranks occurs during the "Freaky Friday" Flip episode. While occupying Lizzie's body, Matt puts frogs in Kate's locker, scaring her and causing her to slip on a banana peel while running away. The banana peel causes her to slide into a door atop of which is balanced a bucket of chili that spills all over her outfit.

In another episode, Matt tricks Kate into opening a spring-loaded can of rubber snakes. Kate gets startled, causing her to lose her balance and fall backward into a pond.

On Will & Grace, Grace was trying to help Karen live more frugally when she was cut off from Stanley's money. This led to Grace threatening to damage Karen's clothes if she didn't budget.

Grace: Maybe I'll just start with the label. Karen: No, honey! That's the best part! No!

Doctor Who: During his duel with Robin Hood, a button on the Doctor's coat gets lopped off. He's not too pleased about that.

The Latest Buzz: Amanda understandably freaks out when her designer dress gets a toner stain on it in "The Gala Issue". This leads to some creative Rip Tailoring.

The base rulebooks to the World of Darkness books have short vignettes illustrating each of the attributes, abilities, and powers a character can possess. For Mage: The Ascension and the Melee stat, we get a story about a mage named Vern fending off a drunk cowboy with a switchblade, using a pool cue.

By the end, the man was face-down on the pool table, and Vern had suffered only a cut to his leather jacket. That hurt more than anything, of course. The jacket had sentimental value.

Video Games

In Devil May Cry 3, Lady shoots some holes in Dante's coat. He then gestures at them while looking annoyed at her.

In Fallout 3, the first thing Mister Burke says if you shoot him is "I just had this suit tailored!".

Ripto in Spyro 2: Ripto's Rage! gets pretty ticked after the titular dragon sneaks up on him and singes his cape.

The Spy class sometimes complains (during a taunt) when the opponent gets blood on his suit, and his reaction to getting Jarate or Mad Milk thrown on him sounds much more anguished than anyone else's.

The Sniper will also sometimes taunt after killing a Spy: "Aw, did I get blood on your suit?"

Left 4 Dead 2: Nick is constantly fretting over his suit, often to a further degree than his own wellbeing. Sometimes when shot by a fellow survivor he screams about how expensive his suit was, When forced to wade through swamp mud his main concern is that it'll be hard to get the mud stains out of his suit, along with several other examples.

Visual Novels

Downplayed example in Fate/stay night. In the Unlimited Blade Works route, Gilgamesh at one point declines to kill the main characters because, thanks to Lancer, the building they're all in is on fire and his clothes are getting soot on them.

In The Wretched Ones, Jackson accidently pours wine over Nicholas' head, staining his white shirt. Nicholas in turn climbs over the table, grabs Jackson by the shirt collar, and tries to do the same to him.

In Rusty and Co. Level 6, Ezra the vampiress cares more for the damage done to her dress than to her body (which she can regenerate anyway).

Ezra: This. dress. was. vintage.

Web Original

Couette, the Noob female character who's the most vain about her appearance, has one or two scenes of making a big deal out of damage on her clothes in the middle of a battle.

Western Animation

Daphne from A Pup Named Scooby-Doo often reacts with disgust if her clothes or her go-go boots get even the least bit dirty.

Samurai Jack; in the episode "Jack and the Travelling Creatures", Jack comes across a time portal protected by a mysterious guardian in a nice black suit. The Guardian has Jack's number in combat, slowly overwhelming him with a variety of swords, sais, and guns. Jack appears to get an advantage when he kicks two missiles at the Guardian, but it turns out it just wrecked his suit. The Guardian does not take this well.

In the Teen Titans episode "A Date with Destiny", Starfire gets into a brawl with Kitten, the Bratty Teenage Daughter of a super-villain, because Kitten blackmailed Robin into being her prom date with threats of unleashing her father's giant killer moths on the city. This trope comes into play when Starfire throws Kitten into a cake, leading Kitten to furiously shout "You ruined my dress!"

In the Hey Arnold! episode "Ms. Perfect", the girls in Arnold's class come to resent their new classmate Lila because she (unintentionally) upstages them at the things each of them are known for. For revenge, they pull a prank that results in Lila getting covered in spinach in front of a cafeteria's worth of students. She then runs out of the cafeteria in tears because the other kids laugh at her.

In Totally Spies!, this trope seems to be Clover's greatest fear. In one episode, she was actually reluctant to rescue her two best friends because doing so would bring her into contact with a muddy river.

In the Rugrats episode "Little Dude", as Tommy is unwittingly causing havoc in a high school cafeteria, he accidentally gets pudding on one student's football uniform. The student furiously assumes that resident bad boy Ramone is responsible and responds by flicking mashed potatoes onto his leather jacket, causing Ramone to very calmly walk over to him amidst gasps from other students and, very calmly, exchange food stains on clothes with him.

In Young Justice, the villain Brick gets his extremely nice suit ruined during a fight with Speedy. He's rightly pissed; do you know how hard it is to find a suit in his size?

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